The Associated Press is reporting that Justice Stevens has confirmed that he has hired only one clerk for OT10. Typically, Stevens hires all of his clerks at one time during the summer a year before their term begins.
As always, its hard to read too much into this. Is it possible that this was a good [...]

Above the Law is reporting that Justice Souter hasn’t hired any clerks for OT09 and suggests that it may hint towards his retirement. I think this is an example of ATL jumping the gun and overrating their skill as investigative journalists.
The idea of late hiring isn’t totally unfounded though. Just last year, ATL posted Souter’s [...]

(Nearly) every majority opinion features a short introduction before it jumps into the standard I, II, III, IV, etc structure. Some Justices simply introduce the facts very briefly (Scalia), while others discuss the procedural history (Thomas), and others discuss the underlying issue in the case (Souter.) I took a look at all of the cases [...]

The use footnotes has been a topic of quiet conversation around the judiciary for some time now. One group of Judges and practitioners (and an even larger percentage of students) find them to be burdensome and often unnecessary. Others think they serve as useful guides and make opinions more readable. Footnotes largely come in two [...]

In 1957, former-law clerk William Rehnquist wrote an exposé in US News about the role of clerks on the Supreme Court. Adam Liptak mentioned (here) the former-clerk’s article in relation to a recent study from the DePaul Law Review (here). The surge in interest over the case inspired US News to repost the article online [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role clerks play and how they influence the way cases are accepted and decided. Obviously they play a huge role in Cert. Pool (which Justices Stevens and Alito forgo) as well as writing the opinions once they are ready to be distributed.
In today’s order’s list (here), [...]

Apparently I’m late on this, but Adam Liptak at the New York Times reports that Justice Alito has opted out of the Cert. Pool. The Cert. Pool is a system in which Justices pool together their clerks to review cert petitions more efficiently. One clerk will review petitions and draft a memo that is circulated [...]

Over the last few decades, the Court has been granting review on fewer and fewer cases every year. In the 1929-1930 term, the Court saw 981 cases on its docket and ruled on 156 of them. In the 2002-2003 term, the Court ruled on 84 of the 9,406 cases that came before it. This year [...]